PDF: Present Documents Fabulously

We enable effective communication between agencies and members of public by Presenting Documents Fabulously on Mobile Phones!

Meet Team 58

😎 We are the Parents Gateway (PG) team, tackling PDF readability challenges to enhance the user experience on our platform.

What is Parents Gateway?
A one-stop portal that strengthens school-home partnerships, helping parents stay informed and engaged in their children's education.

Problem Statement

Parents using Parents Gateway need to read and extract key information from posts when schools/agencies send critical updates about their children.

📌 BUT 56% of posts contain PDFs, which are difficult to read on mobile due to:

• Small screen sizes
• Overwhelming content
• Poor user experience

⚠️ This leads to:

• Frustration for parents
• Missed critical information
• Declining parental engagement

🚀 How might we...
Improve PDF readability on mobile phones for parents, without adding extra work for staff creating content?

Research Findings

Parents' Perspective

📊 Surveyed: 49 parents | 🎤 Interviews: 5 parents

• 92% surveyed read PDFs on mobile
• Only 40% surveyed reported discomfort, yet 100% of interviewees were observed to have workarounds, including:
  • Zooming in & taking screenshots
  • Transferring PDFs to a desktop for easier reading

Staff Perspective

📊 Data collated from: 2025 Staff Survey (73 participants) & SOS Staff Survey

💬 Key findings:

• Staff spend significant time chasing parents for responses and find it difficult to engage parents
• PDFs remain the default because:
  • They are more comfortable drafting in Microsoft Word compared to in PG
  • Approval workflows require specific templates
  • Signatures from school leaders are deemed necessary
  • There’s a perception that PDFs are easier for parents to read

2024 Parent Feedback

📨 17% of feedback relates to PDF readability issues.

🗣️ 1 star review Google Playstore review:

"Reading A4 PDF letters on a mobile device is a royal pain."

Our Approach

We built an end-to-end solution that transforms how staff create posts and how parents consume information—all with minimal friction.

For Staff: Simplified Post Creation

Currently, staff manually fill in >8 fields when creating a post on PG. Our solution reduces this effort to just uploading a PDF!

🔹 How it works:
1️⃣ Content Extraction & Processing – Automatically extracts and structures content from PDFs.
2️⃣ Readability Scoring & Recommendations – Provides instant feedback to improve readability.
3️⃣ Auto-Filled Post Fields – Extracted content generates titles and summaries, reducing effort.

With this, staff become more aware of mobile readability—without extra work!

For Parents: A Seamless Reading Experience

Parents can now effortlessly consume PDFs on mobile with three key features:

1️⃣ PDF Reflow – Reformats PDFs into a mobile-friendly view, eliminating zooming and panning.
2️⃣ Audio Mode – Converts text to speech, ideal for users with visual impairments or those multitasking.
3️⃣ Auto-Generated Summaries – Provides concise summaries for quick understanding.

A Flexible API Service

At its core, our solution is a modular API with 5 key services:

Extraction – Pulls text & structure from PDFs.

• PDF Reflow – Converts PDFs into mobile-friendly formats.
• Summarisation – Generates concise summaries.
• Audio Mode – Converts text to speech for accessibility.
• Readability Score – Provides feedback & improvement tips.

📌 Flexible integration: Clients can use any combination of these services. Our UI showcases the ideal implementation.

User Testing Insights

Rating is out of 6 where 1 is very poor and 6 is excellent.

Parents' Feedback (22 respondents)

🔹 Top 5 Findings:

1. Customizable PDF Font Size (Avg. Rating: 5.64)
   • Readability is a key priority for users.
2. Mobile-Friendly PDF View (Avg. Rating: 5.45)
   • Users appreciate the optimised layout.
3. Strong Interest in Integration with Parents Gateway (Avg. Rating: 5.45)
   • High demand for this feature.
4. In-App PDF Reader Saves Time (Avg. Rating: 5.41)
   • Eliminates the need to leave the app.
5. Feature Enhances Mobile Reading Experience (Avg. Rating: 5.41)
   • Positive impact on user experience.

❤️ Top Compliment

While using this feature, I can really feel that MOE is customer-centric!

Staff Feedback (3 respondents)

🔹 Top 5 Findings:

1. Ease of Navigation in Post Creation (Avg. Rating: 5.67)
2. Relevance & Accuracy of Generated Titles (Avg. Rating: 5.00)
3. Value of Readability Review (Avg. Rating: 4.67)
4. Relevance & Accuracy of Summaries (Avg. Rating: 4.33)
5. Desire to Have This as a Permanent Feature (Avg. Rating: 4.00)

📌 Key Takeaways:
✅ Parents' demand is strong—high satisfaction and feature requests.
⚠️ Staff feedback is mixed—some concerns over summary accuracy and placement of the readability score, overall UI is easy to use

Development Feasibility

Tangible Benefits

Estimated Development Cost (Annual)

Potential Cost Savings (Annual)

📊 Cost-benefit ratio: Projected cost savings for staff is estimated at $3,092,250 which is 18 times the development cost. 💰 Cost per transaction: $0.001

Intangible Benefits

🔹 Accessibility Impact – 30% of Singaporean adults have low literacy and 18% of users interviewed has impaired vision; our solution improves their access to information.
🔹 Parental Engagement – Time saved across 60M annual recipients = 4.35M hours saved per year.
🔹 Reduced Admin Workload – Up to 79,167 staff hours saved annually.

Conclusion

Our project, PDF: Present Documents Fabulously, successfully addresses a high-impact problem by improving the readability of PDFs on mobile phones for parents using Parents Gateway.

Problem Impact & Solution Comprehensiveness ✅

We identified a clear and significant pain point—parents struggle to read PDFs on mobile, leading to missed critical information and frustration. Our research, including surveys with 49 parents and >73 staff, validated the problem's scale. Our solution improves PDF readability without adding extra work for staff, ensuring seamless adoption.

User Testing & Demand Validation ✅

We conducted user testing, gathering 22 responses at the Feedback Bazaar, confirming strong demand for our solution. Key features, such as PDF reflow, summarisation and audio mode, received high usability scores.

• 92% of parents surveyed read PDFs on mobile, and all 5 interviewed had workarounds, proving the need for a better experience.
• Staff appreciated the automation in post creation, but wanted more specific feedback in readability.
• Stakeholder interest is evident, with strong user demand and feasibility for future integration.

Technical Robustness & Scalability ✅

Our solution is a modular, API system, ensuring scalability and flexibility for different use cases. The content extraction, summarisation, and audio features enhance accessibility and efficiency. User experience is polished, with an intuitive design.

• Projected cost savings of 18x the development cost highlight its financial viability.
• Our low-friction implementation ensures easy adoption without disrupting existing workflows.

Next Steps

With a strong foundation in problem validation, demand, and technical feasibility, we aim to:
✅ Pilot the solution to measure impact, gather feedback, and refine the solution before a broader rollout ✅ Enhance prompts to refine summarisation and improve accessibility ✅ Extend our API service for broader adoption in other applications

PDF readability shouldn't be a barrier to communication. Our solution makes school-home interactions smoother, more accessible, and more effective for all. 🚀